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I occasionally see news about an advance in medical technology for putting people in stasis, or at least stabilizing them in an emergency until medical treatment is possible. While this is important, the real money in this technology is selling stasis chambers to parents.

Think about it. If you're a parent, you know what I mean. Sometimes you desperately with you could press "pause" on some remote control and just catch your breath for a minute, or at least get a good night's sleep. So on those days when you're about to lose your cool, you just put the kids to sleep in the stasis chamber until you have a chance to calm down.

The downside, of course, is the temptation to use it too much and grow old and die before your baby is in first grade. But I still think it would save the sanity of many a parent.

I call it a Mount Erebus, after a volcano in Antarctica. Think of mashed potatoes and gravy, except it's ice cream and root beer. It's basically an inside-out root beer float. I'm thinking if you pre-chill the plate you'll get more time before it melts. Awesome, or just crazy?

I like to get my taxes done early each year. Not because I'm especially patriotic, but because every year I've been fortunate to get a big, fat refund. And that has helped us with some important things, like last year when it largely funded hospital bills from Allison's birth.

Well, this year is no exception, in that we have something specific we are putting the refund toward (more on that in a later post; probably much later). So I finished up the taxes last night to discover that not only was my federal refund far less than I had hoped, but for the first time in my 15 years of working I actually owe tax, to the state.

This year we were fortunate to move up financially, from "chub night" to "hamburger helper," but it is a bit of a shock to actually have to pay tax. Fortuntely, I'm still on a first-name basis with the staff at the plasma donation center...

Last week in church we heard from an older couple who had just returned from 18 months in Tonga. The wife spent much of her time discussing how little emphasis Tongans place on material goods. She mentioned that before they went to Tonga she had been considering a remodel of her kitchen when they returned, but she was now determined to place less emphasis on such worldly things.

After church someone apparently mistook her coat for their own and left with it. I guess she looked for a while, then ended up leaving a note on the last coat in the building with the message, "You took my coat. Please call me," and her contact info. I just thought it was funny that it happened minutes after she stated her freedom from materialism.

On Saturdays I generally run at the Jordan River Parkway, which is a paved trail that runs most of the length of the Salt Lake Valley. It's a popular trail, and I often see people walking their dogs there. I never realized just how many dogs are walked there, however, until this winter when there was a lot of snow. Every few feet there was another spot of yellow snow along the side of the trail. It was disturbiong to see essentially an unbroken trail of urine for miles at a time.

Maybe it's the sleep deprivation talking, but I just had an idea for the best, and most expensive, meal ever. And it doesn't even matter what the food is. But you take it up into orbit and let the food cook from the heat generated as it reenters the atmosphere. True, the space shuttle heats up to about 3,000 degrees F, but I'm sure with the proper heat shield and insulation you could get your food just the right temperature. Tell me some billionaire wouldn't want this meal.

I don't care for dark chocolate. It tastes bitter to me, because I'm a super taster. I've never been able to stand it. But a couple weeks ago someone gave us some Dove dark chocolate, and I thought it was a waste to just throw it away, so I tried it. And it wasn't terrible. Now I'm not saying I loved it, and it will never taste as good to me as milk chocolate does. But maybe dark chocolate could exist some day as its own more-or-less enjoyable flavor to my palate. We'll see what happens as I continue to get older and stranger.